1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display device which achieves reduction of power consumption of a backlight unit via data modulation of an image to be displayed to enhance display resolution, and a method of driving the same, and more particularly to a liquid crystal display device which may maximize reduction efficacy of power consumption of a backlight unit while minimizing deterioration of display resolution and enhancing image quality, and a method of driving the same.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Flat panel display devices gathering strength in recent years include liquid crystal display devices, field emission display devices, plasma display panels, organic light emitting diode display devices, and the like.
Among such flat panel display devices, liquid crystal display devices are being actively applied to laptop computers, desktop monitors, and mobile terminals owing to, e.g., excellent resolution, color representation, image quality thereof.
A typical liquid crystal display device includes a liquid crystal panel having a plurality of liquid crystal cells to display an image, a drive circuit to drive the liquid crystal panel, and a backlight unit to emit light to the liquid crystal panel.
The liquid crystal panel displays a desired image via regulation of transmittance of light emitted from the backlight unit according to an image signal. In this case, the backlight unit drives a plurality of light sources included therein according to a light-source drive-control signal supplied from the drive circuit, to emit light to the liquid crystal panel.
The backlight unit driven as described above generates light having constant brightness at all times regardless of the image signal of the liquid crystal panel, which may increase power consumption.
For this reason, methods of reducing drive time of the backlight unit to reduce power consumption while maintaining quality of a display image are proposed in the related art. In particular, methods of regulating modulation of image data and drive time of the backlight unit according to an average gray level of display image data have been used.
However, in the case of using the average gray level of image data, image quality may be deteriorated due to gray-level saturation and gray-level banding according to image characteristics. Moreover, attempts to reduce deterioration of image quality may have a negative effect on efficiency control, thus having difficulty in reducing power consumption.